Nosh Pit

High-Tech Meets Good Eatin’

Restaurant gadgetry, meet Seattle.

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Nov 07, 2011 at 09:00AM 0 Comments

Photo courtesy tabbedout.com

First there was that restaurant in Germany that fired all its waiters in favor of at-table computers for ordering and automated table delivery. Soon iPads began replacing menus across New York. Now Palisade in Magnolia announces that it’s the first Seattle restaurant to launch an iPad wine list.

Allowing real-time updates and major green cred (Palisade’s paper list numbered 35 pages), the iPad wine list at Palisade also enables searches by grape, price range, even vineyard.

And menus aren’t the only aspect of dining out that can benefit from tech tweaks. Poquitos on Capitol Hill is but the latest of several local joints to sign on with Tabbedout, a service which allows you to settle up by mobile phone. The mobile payment service allows users to open a tab, view that tab in real time, then pay it from their phone.  

Tabbedout’s website lists some 19 other Seattle places that make use of their services, with conspicuous overrepresentation among the watering holes of Capitol Hill (Auto Battery, Unicorn) and Ballard (Sunset Tavern, BalMar, Hattie’s Hat).

All discussion of which is really just an excuse to flog the best technological restaurant development in town: Seattle Met’s own brand new, indescribably useful, really really smart restaurant app, available in the iTunes store. (Dig the critic’s picks!)

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Tags: Tech, critic's picks, Food Apps, Critic's Notebook

Easter Feastin’

Critic’s picks on where to eat on Easter

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Mar 22, 2010 at 09:00AM 1 Comments

De-lish!

So much great food to be had on Easter…so little time.

In my day I have feasted on Essential Bakery Cafe hot cross buns and Macrina Bakery Budapest Coffee Cake and Le Fournil’s extraordinary almond croissants on Easter day.

But something about the wraparound patio at Trellis its Berkshire ham eggs Benie—is calling me this year. Or the crispy-luscious Grand Marnier prawns at Barking Frog , in the heart of Woodinville’s wine country. I’ll be extra happy if their sun-dappled patio is open that day.

Or maybe I’ll skip through Pike Place Market for a table at Cafe Campagne and a plate of oeufs en meurette, or featherweight brioche French toast, with a festive Champagne cocktail.

But I won’t fill up by day, as I already know that Easter evening will be spent supping on one of my favorite dishes at Capitol Hill’s heralded Piedmontese farmhouse, Cascina Spinasse. Which dish?

Why the chicory salad with marinated rabbit, of course. Can’t get much more Easter than that.

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Tags: critic's picks, Special Dinners, Easter

Free Fries This Friday!

An Ash Wednesday message about a really good Friday

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Feb 17, 2010 at 08:00AM 0 Comments

Free!

Every third Friday is always a big deal at Pike Street Fish Fry, as that’s the day those fine fryers dispense free fries from 5pm to 7pm.

Yes, FREE. Like happy hour, for your arteries. Only freer.

Put it on your calendar, folks. Because this month’s third Friday happens in two days.

And they’re pretty good, those PSFF fries. Seems like lately this town has rediscovered fried potatoes. You know about the flimsy, grease-soaked wonderments at Dick’s, or the creme-fraiche drizzled ones at 35th Street Bistro.

But did you know about the gloriously golden crispy fries, fluffy within, at Fremont’s famous Roxy’s Diner? Or, up a notch or two pretension-wise, the truffle-oiled lovelies at Ventana, the newish small-plate joint from the Twist people, in Belltown?

Notable both. Now tell us where you get your fry on, won’t you?

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Tags: Bargain Bites, Restaurants, critic's picks, Fries

Lusty!

The critic holds forth on the perfect restaurants for Valentine’s Day.

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Jan 25, 2010 at 09:00AM 9 Comments

I’ll have seconds, please!

Being a restaurant critic, I can sometimes get a little overheated about restaurant food. Imagine. But for occasions like Valentine’s Day, who’s kidding who. It’s all about the atmo, cowboys.

For instance, there are restaurants I wouldn’t necessarily make a beeline for on a regular night; places like that lush nightspot Ibiza in Pioneer Square or the perfectly serviceable new Thai storefront in Madrona, Naam.

But for Valentine’s Day? (It’s on a Sunday this year, so the following recommendations might as well pertain to Saturday…or—who cares?—another random night.) Seeing as how both joints have beds for tables…I might make an exception. At Ibiza, where the fare is Mediterranean, it’s more like chaises…but at Naam a few of the tables rise shallowly from a sea of cushions, with triangular pillows for a little lumbar uplift.

Throw in some Champagne or a couple of sparkly cocktails and things could get festive.

Serafina of course gets my vote for sexiest restaurant in Seattle, with its candlelit Italian soul. Lesser known but every bit as romantic is its foxy little sister just across the courtyard, Cicchetti, where the Venetian tapas (try the pizzas from the wood-fired oven) always hit the spot. The G-spot.

Ha!

Other little cocktaily small plate joints good for canoodling include the ever-Parisian Sambar and the late-night Licorous.

If a very private table is your dream, how about one of the high-high-high-backed booths at Belltown’s lush Queen City Grill? They’re like studio apartments.

Or that one table, the curtained one near the door, at the winsome little Capitol Hill secret spot Chez Gaudy?

Or Table #19 at Fremont’s bizarro Bizzarro, a terribly intimate little deuce behind a framing post? I can’t imagine a hotter place to twirl pasta and whisper sweet nothings.

Unless it’s home. But there you have to do the dishes.

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Tags: New Seattle Restaurants, Cocktails, Restaurants, critic's picks, romance, Valentine's Day